The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  She knew what that meant and took two long, quick strides up the stairs, trying to flee, before she felt his hand snag her leg and she fell on the carpet of the landing. Ward was quick and deft, and she knew what he intended. She let out a squeal of delight, but of pique too. It was the game they sometimes played on the long staircase up to his loft on the quays in Dublin where you could be free and nothing mattered.

  In a trice her little monkey of a man was upon her, and she couldn’t resist. She rolled him over and pinned his arms to the carpet. But, just as she was bending to give him the deepest, best kiss that he had ever received, she heard.

  “Children?”

  She looked up, and there stood McGarr, a bundle of what looked like photocopies under each arm. He had spent the last several hours making his own copy of Paddy Power’s note cards.

  “Ah, Chief,” said Bresnahan, climbing off Ward. “Just the man I’ve been looking for.”

  She saw McGarr’s eyes float toward Ward’s; he then continued his transit up the staircase.

  Bresnahan picked herself up, straightened her riding—ahem!—jacket, and followed, saying, “Chief—one moment. It’s not been all fun and games. I’ve something further to tell you.”

  Ward quickly descended the stairs toward the elevator and the now-cold food meant for Shane Frost, Eire Bank purveyor. The elevator door was opening and closing on the cart, making a racket that sounded like something from the “Anvil Chorus.”

  THURSDAY

  “Love is death, come upon with passion.”

  DJUNA BARNES

  CHAPTER 20

  Wig

  “DIDN’T I KNOW it was her all along,” whispered Bernie McKeon, when shortly after nine the next morning McGarr, Bresnahan, O’Shaughnessy, and he had gathered in front of Gretta Osbourne’s suite.

  McGarr knocked and turned an ear to the door; he had tried to reach her by telephone at 7:30, 8:00, 8:30, and 9:00 A.M. He had arranged for the desk clerk at the Waterville Lake Hotel to meet them at the church in Sneem. Like most area residents, the clerk had said she would be attending Paddy Power’s funeral. Over his arm McGarr carried a greatcoat like Gladden’s; in that hand he held a farmer’s hat. He knocked again.

  “Potato-puss hex complex,” McKeon went on. “Guilt written in lumps all over her face.”

  O’Shaughnessy’s head turned to him.

  “Consider the parallels. Power was old enough to be her father. They had carnal relations, or so I imagine, which in this country always results in guilt and a man paying, one way or another. Didn’t Power and her then attempt to purge themselves with fire? No luck. She survived and, worse, was disfigured. Power tried money next, whole gobs of it, to be paid at some time in her future, not his, which was his mistake. When he rejected her in the end, she did him dirty.” Unable to contain himself, McKeon began chuckling.

  “Didn’t you see the play at the Abbey a coopl’ a years back? Freudened the hell out of me with twelve ‘Jungans,’ not one of whom I named Eddie.”

  Puffing his cheeks, O’Shaughnessy passed wind between his lips volubly.

  “Twas the beginning of language, I’m told,” McKeon observed.

  McGarr knocked once more and, still hearing nothing, turned to the hotel carpenter, who was standing behind them, holding a ladder and a toolbox.

  Osbourne’s red Audi with the Eire Bank bumper sticker was still in the car park. None of the Parknasilla staff had seen her leave the hotel. Like Paddy Power’s room three days earlier, the door was locked from the inside, both door latch and dead bolt.

  But not the night chain.

  Gretta Osbourne was seated at the head of the conference table that filled the sitting room of her suite. She was wearing a black, patterned dressing gown. One arm was thrust out before her; on it rested her head. The bun at the back of her head had become undone, and her long gray-blond hair had spilled over the edge of the table.

  The eye, which was visible, was open and staring down at the grain of the table as though trying to divine some mystery that was locked in the wood. Near the fingers of her right hand was a large black fountain pen, on the gold nib of which black ink had dried. The note card near it said:

  I think it is only appropriate to use this form to say I never knew how much I’d miss Paddy. I feel so guilty that

  There was no more.

  “See what I told you? You never listen to me,” McKeon whispered to O’Shaughnessy. “Guilt rules all. It’s the reigning emotion, at least in this country.”

  With weary eyes McGarr regarded McKeon, who tried to look guiltless.

  A reach away from the woman was a champagne glass and a magnum of Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin: both empty. Near the last was a small vial of pills, the label of which was turned toward the corpse and said:

  M.J.P. Frost, Chemist

  Sneem, Co. Kerry

  From: Dr. Maurice T. Gladden

  For: Miss G. Osbourne

  Rx: Phenobarbital to induce sleep:

  100 mg. Max. dose 3 tablets.

  DO NOT USE IN COMBINATION WITH ALCOHOL

  “Tech Squad,” said McGarr, and McKeon immediately left. “And the door.” Bresnahan stepped to the open door, in which bankers, who had been passing in the hall, now stood. She asked them to move on.

  McGarr raised himself up and looked around at the rest of the room, which, with copy and fax machines, a computer terminal, and three rows of filing cabinets, looked more like a tastefully decorated office than a hotel suite. On a sideboard sat a notebook, a kind of diary, that was written in longhand.

  McGarr glanced at the note card and then walked over to the diary: same ink, same hand, it appeared, though an expert opinion would be required.

  Ward appeared by his side bearing a tray with three cups that contained a small amount of coffee and a rather large splash of malt whiskey. McGarr poured McKeon’s measure into his own cup and handed the third to O’Shaughnessy, who drank his off quickly and replaced the cup on the tray.

  McGarr turned to Ward. “Rut’ie told me you were on your way to Frost’s suite with that cart last night.”

  Ward, giving his back to the crowd at the door, then told McGarr what he had seen and heard: Frost in his skivvies waving a champagne bottle; Osbourne saying that she had changed her mind and no longer wished to sell her shares to the Japanese; Sonnie delivering an unopened refill.

  Later, when Ward arrived with the food, Osbourne was sitting on a couch, a full champagne glass on the table beside her. Frost was still nearly naked and very drunk. “He gave me a tanner and the advice to go into business for myself, which was ‘the only way.’” Ward meant he was given a ten-pound note. “I had the feeling there was somebody else there, maybe in the bedroom. But the place was a mess from Frost’s afternoon party,” and perhaps it was only his imagination after what he had witnessed Frost engaged in earlier in the day.

  McGarr glanced down at the bottle, then advanced on the small portable bar that had been pushed against a wall. No champagne there, and none of the glasses looked to have been used. More to the point, there were no champagne glasses, which suggested that Osbourne had taken the glass on the table from Frost’s room.

  And the magnum as well, which was fifty ounces. With an alcohol percentage of—11 percent, that made 5.5 ounces. Not a whole lot, even if she had drunk it all, which was unlikely. But combined with the phenobarbital? Again, he would have to wait for a professional opinion.

  One thing was certain. She had arrived at the room well enough to have thrown the dead bolt and perhaps written the beginning of the message on the note card in front of her. McGarr moved to the windows in the sitting room and then those in the bedroom and toilet—all locked from the inside. The bed had been unslept in, the costume that she had been wearing on the day before had been left out on a clothes horse for the morning maid to take to the laundry.

  When McGarr returned to the sitting room, he found Frost standing by the table, looking down at Gretta Osbourne’s corpse. He was dressed
all in black, and the skin of his long, handsome face was both flaccid and flushed. When his eyes rose to McGarr, they were netted with broken capillaries from his celebrations of the day and the night before. Clearly he was in pain; there was no faking the tremor in his right cheek. McGarr handed him his coffee cup, which he had not touched.

  Frost looked down into the dark fluid, raised it to his nose, then smiled. “You’re a right man, McGarr.” He sipped, then drank. Straightening up, he tilted his head from side to side in a practiced manner, as though assaying the limber of his neck or easing the passage of the alcohol into his system. He then looked back down on the woman who had been his colleague, and lover, McGarr supposed.

  He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders before saying, “Gretta was one of those persons who kept everything inside. She was sensitive, but she made a point of never showing her emotions. You know, so as not to be branded a typical woman.”

  He finished the coffee, then placed the cup on the tray that Ward was still holding. He touched a hand to his chest and waited until he could speak again. His bruised eyeballs were at once glassy, opaque, and swollen.

  “I’d no idea Paddy’s death had affected her so. She’d had counseling, you know.”

  McGarr waited, regarding him.

  Out in the hall Bresnahan said, “Move on now. This is none of your concern.”

  “For depressions. Years of it, after the fire.” He pointed to the scars on her face, which seemed more conspicuous now in death. “I can dig up her psychiatrists’ names, if you like. Perhaps they can explain…why, when she had so much to live for.”

  Like 216 million pounds. McGarr stepped to the bar where he had seen a bottle of malt. Back in front of Ward and the tray, he poured two large dollops of malt into the coffee cups and reached one toward Frost, who looked down at it with fear and longing.

  “Ah, no, Superintendent—I couldn’t. The first bit was enough. I’ve got Paddy’s funeral—”

  Couldn’t miss that, McGarr thought. Sean Dermot O’Duffy and his entourage of movers and shakers would be there, and Frost—certainly a celebrity after the sale of Eire Bank that would also have enriched the “government insiders,” Gretta Osbourne had called them, who owned 10 percent of the shares. McGarr made mental note to obtain the list of Eire Bank stockholders, by court order if necessary.

  “Well—one more can’t hurt.” With both hands Frost reached for the cup. “Set me up, don’t you know.”

  McGarr was hoping. “Been celebrating?”

  “A bit.”

  McGarr waited, but Frost said no more. Again he had turned toward the figure at the table.

  “Did you see her last night?”

  Frost’s eyes shied to Ward, before he nodded.

  “Where?”

  “My room. It’s where she got the champagne.”

  “For your celebration,” McGarr probed.

  Frost only nodded. “I’d had a bit of a lead on her. She said she’d do me a favor and take the bottle with her.”

  “What time was that?”

  Frost’s eyes floated up into his skull. He shook his head to say he could not remember.

  “What sort of automobile did Ms. Osbourne drive?”

  Frost had to think. “It’s a red Audi, I believe. New. I don’t think it has a thousand miles on it. She hated to drive and only brought it out with her this time because connections between here and Dublin are otherwise dreadful.”

  “What would she have been doing on the Waterville Road on Sunday morning?”

  “But she wasn’t. Sunday morning we went sailing bright and early. It was a glorious day, and, as perhaps you know, I have a house here in Sneem on the harbor. Sailing was one of the few ways Gretta could relax.” His eyes turned to the woman again. “You know, no phone, no computer, only the elements and the boat to contend with. She really worked too hard.”

  “But she and her car were seen at the Rathfield ruin.”

  Frost cocked his head. “The car, perhaps. But not Gretta.”

  “Go on,” McGarr had to prompt.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at here, but Gretta had asked Mossie Gladden to stop by on Friday and take a look at Paddy when he arrived. She was worried about him, she said, his having seemed so peaked when she had last seen him in London. Gretta was the advance person—you know, to make sure everything was ready for the conference.” Frost flicked a wrist at the machines in the room.

  “Anyhow, after examining Paddy, Mossie gave him a sedative and then prescribed an antibiotic that he said was only available in Kenmare. Nevertheless, I rang up my father, but sure enough, he didn’t have it. The old fella’s getting on now, and he doesn’t fancy splashing out for every new drug that comes on the market.

  “By then it was midafternoon, but Mossie said he could get the stuff, could he get there in time. Problem was, he didn’t trust that old banger of his to transport them there and back. Gretta said, ‘Take my car. I won’t be needing it for the rest of the week.’ I don’t know when Mossie got back. I had other affairs to attend.”

  All 423 million of them, McGarr thought. He also remembered that Kenmare and Waterville, while in different directions, were just about equidistant from Parknasilla. “Did he return with the antibiotic?”

  Frost shook his head. “I don’t know, but I didn’t see any such thing in Paddy’s medicine cabinet when we—” When he and McGarr looked after Power’s death, he meant.

  But Gladden had not been the country gorsoon who had dropped off the photocopies of the notecards at the Waterville Lake Hotel; the desk clerk knew Gladden and would have recognized him, had it been he. Could she have been lying? McGarr didn’t think so.

  As though a sudden thought struck him, Frost’s head went back. “Why all the questions?”

  McGarr hunched his shoulders. “Here we have a bottle of champagne, here a vial that says it contained phenobarbital, and here a dead woman. At the very least an autopsy is required.”

  Whether from genuine grief or merely alcohol, Frost’s eyes suddenly filled with tears; one splatted on the surface of the table. Frost stepped back, reached inside his black topcoat, and removed a handkerchief. “I’d just come down to pick her up, and—”

  They waited while Frost blew his nose. “Look—I’ll be right back to handle whatever has to be done. Gretta had no family that I know of, and I was both her friend and solicitor. I’ll see to the…arrangements. But right now I’ve got Paddy’s funeral.” He glanced at his watch then made for the door.

  “Who inherits her fifty-one percent of Eire Bank that with power of attorney you’ll now sell to the Japanese?”

  Frost neither turned nor stopped. “That, I’m afraid, is privileged information. Or are you claiming this is murder too?” He pushed past Bresnahan, saying, “What—not going to Paddy’s funeral?”

  “See you there, Mr. Frost.”

  “Shane. I told you yesterday, it’s Shane.”

  “The day before, I believe it was.”

  “That’s right. How could I have forgotten?”

  The funeral. It gave McGarr an idea. Gladden would not miss the opportunity for a confrontation with Sean Dermot O’Duffy, given all the media that would be present. Somehow McGarr was missing something, and he didn’t think he’d find it here in spite of the several anomalies that he could see before him.

  If Gretta Osbourne had collapsed while writing the note card, why was the pen not still in her hand? Instead it was placed neatly, nearly lined up in the same plane as the note card. At the very least McGarr would have expected a scrawl or line or ink mark on the note card or the table. Or some ink on her right hand, which lay limp near the pen. There was none.

  The bun at the back of her head. How had it become undone? Besides the pen, it was the only detail in the entire room that was out of place. McGarr moved toward the chair, over which he had placed the greatcoat that looked like Gladden’s. He removed the blond wig that Noreen had also purchased. Back at the table he compared
it to the strands of Gretta Osbourne’s hair that were hanging over the edge. It was not a perfect match, but close enough, especially if the plan had been for it to be seen at a distance late in the afternoon.

  Plan. Surely something like that was at work here, right from the careful execution of Power to what now amounted to the felicitous removal of the one other person apart from Paddy Power who had been standing in the way of a windfall for Frost, Nell Power, and a handful of other government insiders and cronies.

  McGarr felt somebody beside him, and looked up to find Bresnahan, who was also garbed in something black but tight and eye-catching. She was wearing a small pillbox hat and a face net. “I’m off now.” Her eyes flashed at the door in which stood the same young man McGarr had seen her with at the bridge in Sneem yesterday.

  Ward forced his eyes down onto the tray in his hands.

  O’Suilleabhain glanced around the room with interest, until he saw the corpse sprawled on the table.

  Said Bresnahan, “When I interviewed Ms. Osbourne, she wrote in this diary.” A spiral wrap of something like crushed silk, the dress was tight and made the sway of her shoulders yet more apparent as she moved toward the sideboard, where sat the notebook that McGarr had used to compare Osbourne’s handwriting with the note card on the table. Taller than McGarr, her gray eyes flickered down on him.

  “She wrote this with her left hand.” She pointed to the entry that bore her own name. “When she drank from a glass, she used her left hand. The phone—when she reached for that, it was with her left hand.” Bresnahan turned her head to the table where the fountain pen rested by Osbourne’s right hand.

  “Hughie?” McGarr said, and Ward joined them at the sideboard. “Get right on Frost. Identify yourself, then ask him to empty the contents of his pockets.”

  Ward smiled; there went his cover, right out the window. And his bar job. Sonnie be praised!

  “Any keys, bring him and them back here, then go to his room. Check to see if the baby monitor is still there and functioning.” He had kept a tape recorder on all night. It was voice-activated and might have picked something up, if Frost hadn’t pulled the plug. “The dining cart you delivered last night? Stay with it until the Tech Squad can get here.